Our ancestors sprang from populations in sub-Saharan Africa that existed between about 100 and 250 thousand years ago. Rapid evolution transformed Homo erectusinto Homo sapiens. Our technology exploded during this evolutionary transition, with several apparent African ‘firsts’ and subsequent spreads of technology into Eurasia. We became human in Africa, and the African ‘firsts’ don’t stop with the initial spread of some Homo sapiens into Eurasia.

Dr. Yonatan Sahle, postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley’s Human Evolution Research Center, has recovered the earliest projectile points in the world. Come hear him explain what they tell us about our intellectual origins … and grapple with the challenges they pose to our understanding of human evolution.